a beer blog about portland, oregon and all the wonderful craft beer in our fair city. we're craft beer ambassadors & beer geek enthusiasts; we meet up over tasty beers. some of us homebrew, a few of us are pro brewers, some of us are hobbyists, and some are firmly entrenched in the portland craft beer scene!

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Thursday, May 3, 2012

#pdxbeergeeks at the CBC2012 : part I

It's been an intense couple of days so far at CBC2012. After waking up at 4am, I arrived in San Diego to overcast skies and one friend richer; I was fortunate enough to have bees rated next to Mike Kinion from Vertigo Brewing in Hillsboro. Seated behind us were Preston of Cascade Barrel House, and Yetta from Hop & Vine.
Mike and I grabbed the free shuttle to Hotel Circle, and the fun for CBC began.
Wednesday passed in a blur.

Over to the Town and Country Resort to check in and get badges, and then out to Gordon Biersch for an open house lunch. Met a ton of people. Walked back to the hotel and took a brief nap with the breeze from now sunny San Diego filtering in the open door. A quick change, and it was off to the Canny Awards with Ginger, where I was very kindly asked to participate as a judge (I was really geeing out at this point. I won't lie).
After an hour and a half of gazing at lovely beer cans (and one that shall remain nameless, but was, uh, tacky, to say the least), we made our respective choices for the categories; graphic design, use of color, illustration of name, seasonal/limited release, character, local tie in, and shelf presence.

Changing quickly back at the bat cave/hotel room, we were ready to board the buses for the San Diego Zoo. So many beers! Healthy food (lots of veggies)! Peacocks! Skyfari (an aerial tram)! And, saw some of my favorite people: Matt from Oakshire & Jamie from Ninkasi, and made some new friends as well, including JJ from Petaluma Hills and Acacia from Anderson Valley. While the Zoo was closed, we were able to see some of the animals from our birds' eye view up in the Skyfari - a gorilla, a dingo, flamingos, some monkeys, an ibex-ish critter, and more!

By 8:00 pm the party was winding down at the Zoo, so Julie Wortell of PubQuest came to pick us up and drove to the Toronado, where Deschutes was co-hosting an evening celebrating The Love of Beer's Alison Grayson. While I loved seeing Veronica Vega from Deschutes, and Alison Grayson, it was very crowded and I was growing weary.

I hopped in a cab (perfect timing, there just happened to be one dropping people off) and got back to the hotel to enjoy a lovely evening of rest.